It's Not Personal

We are responding to a recent personal attack on our President, Ajay Bhatt.

It's personal in that it is about Ajay Bhatt, but here's how the excellent Nizkor project defines a personal attack.

A personal attack is committed when a person substitutes abusive remarks for evidence when attacking another person's claim or claims. This line of "reasoning" is fallacious because the attack is directed at the person making the claim and not the claim itself. The truth value of a claim is independent of the person making the claim. After all, no matter how repugnant an individual might be, he or she can still make true claims.

There is nothing abusive about what Phyillaier did. And it is not a substitution for attacking Bhatt's claims. Bhatt's behavior by erecting this fence is being submitted as evidence of hypocrisy with respect to Bhatt's claims that he wants to "Save the Trail". It IS an attack on Bhatt's claims. Bhatt claims he wants to save the trail for everyone to use, and then he tries to take part of it. This is an attack on the claim and not Bhatt. It may not make Bhatt look good, but that is a byproduct rather than the goal.

And it is way more relevant than what they say about Phyillaier .

Mr. Phyillaier is not a neighbor and has no legitimate interest in this particular fence.

He is a trail user and a county resident. So that gives him two interests in this fence. Also, he supports the Purple Line which gives him an interest in showing the hypocrisy of the Save the Trail group.